Last year, Matt Flynn won the Matt Cassel/Schaub Award for a Backup QB Most Likely to Earn a Huge Payday after he closed out the Green Bay Packers’ season with a 480-yard, 6 TD game against the Detroit Lions. Except something funny happened to Flynn along the way to the starting lineup of an eventual 6-10 team – nobody really wanted him. Well, that’s not entirely true. Teams wanted Flynn, they kicked his tires plenty, but nobody was really willing to overpay the dude for one great game.

Hell, Stephen Ross wouldn’t even pay him, so the Seattle Seahawks got Flynn at a relative bargain for 3 years, $19.5 million. Then that whole Russell Wilson experience happened and suddenly Flynn was not only the odd man out, but he was also an afterthought. That’s why the Seahawks are hoping your team’s GM is either desperate or stupid or both, because they’d probably like to trade Flynn now, and Pete Carroll couldn’t feel worse about this whole gosh darn shuck ‘em thing.

“I’ll forever regret the fact that we never got to chance to see him play very much. Everything he did was on point; Russell Wilson just never let it happen. As we move forward we’re going to figure it out,” Carroll said.

“He handled it like a real champion kid, he competed in practice on a regular basis, he never did want to accept, and he still thinks he’s the best quarterback in the program and I admire him for thinking that way,” Carroll said. (Via PFT)

That certainly sounds like a coach’s endorsement for a player as he throws him from the train. So if you’re a fan of Kansas City, Arizona, Jacksonville or any other team that comes up in the QB conversation every year, you now have something to get less-than-mildly excited about.

Flynn will be 28-years old when the 2013 NFL season begins, and unless he’s released he’ll make $7 million just to stand around and wonder if he remembered to record Storage Wars. Hell, even if the Seahawks set him adrift in the Puget Sound, he’ll still make $2 million. So don’t feel bad for Flynn, especially since he presumably still goes home to this:

If I were the Jets’ (currently non-existent) GM, I’d be packaging Nacho and a draft pick for Flynn. Both guys have prohibitive contracts and Pete Carroll is probably the only coach in the league who’d take a risk on Sanchez.

@Right-wing-Nazi: The sad thing is, I’m aware of that, yet I think Carroll is STILL probably the only coach in the league who would take a chance on him. This is a humbled Nacho, after all.

@nachosanchez: Flynn is scheduled to make $7 million (per this newsbyte), so getting Sanchez for $1 million more (plus an extra draft pick) again makes Seattle really the only team the Jets could even potentially make a deal with. After all, Nacho wasn’t half-bad when he had competent playmakers around him, and Marshawn Lynch/Golden Tate/Doug Baldwin sure looked better Sunday than Shonn Greene/Santonio Holmes/Braylon Edwards did two years ago, much less anything the Jets had this year.

Flynn will get picked up by someone, but not for $7 million a year. He’ll be like the second most coveted backup after Smith. They’ll find homes or go to Cleveland to die with all the other backup QBs.

I will continue to say that backup QB is the best job in sports. No expectations, glory if you actually do get a chance and kick ass, millions of dollars just for standing around, and you get to say you’re an NFL QB. Matt Leinart knows what he’s doing.